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SOME MEMORANDA CONCERNING THE AMERICAN INDIANS. 


The Indians of this country may be divided roughly into two classes—(a) 
those who, in varying degrees, are under tlie supervisory care or guardianship 
of the United States and who are known, generally, as “ wards ” of the 
Government, and (b) those who are not. The former class also are known 
as “ restricted ” Indians, the restriction applying, however, only to the manage¬ 
ment and disposition of property, such as lands, money, etc., which their 
guardian-trustee,” the United States, holds in trust for them. The Govern¬ 
ment thus sustains a dual relation to such Indians; it is their guardian and 
trustee. The Indians who are not, in any degree, under Federal supervision, 
are citizens and, so far as their civic status is concerned are no different, as 
re.spects their relations to the Government, from white citizens. 

The Government’s activities as guardian and trustee are confined to Indians 
living in the following 24 States: 


Arizona. 

California. 

Colorado. 

Florida. 

Idaho. 

Iowa. 


Kansas. 

Michigan. 

Minnesota. 

Mississippi. 

Montana. 

Nebraska. 


Nevada. 

New Mexico. 
New York. 
North Carolina. 
North Dakota. 
Oklahoma. 


Oregon. 

South Dakota. 
Utah. 

Washington. 

Wisconsin. 

Wyoming. 


Not all of the Indians in these States are “ wards ” or “ restricted ” ; in every’ 
State listed above there are Indians who are full citizens of the United States 
(and, in numerous instances, are citizens of the State, and voters) having re¬ 
ceived from the (^vernmeiit their land, money, etc., which had been held in 
trust for them. They are “ unrestricted ” Indians, sometimes called “ citizen ” 
Indians. 

The restricted Indian wards of the Government, of whom there are some 
240,000, are the real factors of the so-called ” Indian problem ”; the citizen 
Indians, having pased out from Federal supervision (or never having been 
under such supervision), need not he considered in this matter, excepting that 
what was done to or for them by the Government might well he reviewed in 
the light of the results of such Federal activities. If the effect was good, 
then the Government should continue the particular administrative policy that 
re.sulted favorably; if the effect was had, then the particular cause of such 
effect should he avoided hereafter. 


THE INDIAN PROBLEM. 

The Indian problem is an old one. It began when Columbus discovered 
America in 1492. It has been a changing problem; new conditions brought 
into it new factors. In the beginning it was almost entirely racial, charac¬ 
terized by the struggle of the white race to gain and hold possession of the 
territory of the red race. The white man’s solution of the problem in those 
early days was simple—kill the Indians. Out of this early struggle developed 
racial hatred (of which slight evidences still persist) inspired by wars, mas¬ 
sacres, and plain murders by both sides. Years later it would .seem that the 

1 



‘2 


domiiiiint Caucasians began to realize the problem, in a rather clumsy way, 
to attemi)t to humanize it. They developed the reservation system. At first 
tills was a war measure; they set apart certain areas for the use and oc¬ 
cupancy of the Indians in territory which they then thought would never be 
needed by the white people. 

The wars and the encroachment of white settlers had driven away the 
game upon which the Indians depended for food, clothing and many other es¬ 
sential needs. It became necessary to take care of the Indians and so the 
ration system was introduced. This provision, absolutely necessary at the time, 
proved to be a curse, for it practically made the Indians assisted paupers, and 
this condition resulted in stunting the Indians’ native independence and, finally, 
made them a dependent people. 

To-day the Indian problem is largely one akin to-salvage—to make the best 
that can be made out of the 240,000, more or less, remaining dependent Indian 
wards of the Government and to do this in the shortest possible time. Most 
persons who have this problem much at heart are of the opinion that its solu¬ 
tion must be sought in developing among such Indians an independent and 
self-sustaining American citizenship; in short to merge them into the citizenry 
of the Nation as self-supporting, law-respecting, and educated citizens. 

In the consideration of this pi-oblem much time and effort and many reams of 
white paper can be saved by pleading guilty to the indictment of history that the 
white race has shamefully mistreated the red race. There is no use arguing 
against that proposition. The cold facts of history furnish damning evidence 
against the Caucasians. They and they only made the Indians what they are 
to-day. Some comfort may be found in the knowledge that the present genera¬ 
tion is not responsible for most of the evils that tended to develop the situa¬ 
tion in which the Indians are found. But that knowledge can not be used 
as an apology or as a reason for whites to dodge their individual responsibili¬ 
ties as cogiiardians and cotrustees with the Government in furthering the wel¬ 
fare of the Indian people and in aiding them to accelerate their progress on 
the road to what we call civilization. 

The Indian problem, as stated above, on its face seems to be a simple problem 
of social service, practical philanthropy, or applied sociology. But as a matter 
of fact it is a many-sided question with a great variety of complicationa An 
idea of its complex character may be gained by studying the following presenta¬ 
tion of some of its main factors: 

There are over 200 tribes and bands of Indians in the United States, each 
with its own name and language or dialect; each with its own history and 
traditions; its own tribal code of ethics, prejudices, pride, patriotism, and cus¬ 
toms which have the effect of law. The Indian people are not, in any sense, 
a homogeneous people and can not be dealt with as such. 

These Indians live under climatical, topographical, and geographical condi¬ 
tions which have a range from the Everglades of Florida to the heights of the 
Rocky Mountains; from the timber lands of the Great Lakes to the treeless 
prairies of the Great Plains; from the arable soil of the East to the semi- 
arid deserts of the Southwest; from the Mexican to the Canadian boarder line. 

Thousands of these people are still in a state of higher barbarism although 
strongly influenced by contact with whites, and thousands are as civilized as 
their white neighbors, with many who are highly educated, cultured and re¬ 
fined men and women. Thousands are so little advanced in their knowledge 
of the English language that they can speak but a few words and can not write 
or read any English. There are tens of thousands who not only speak but read 
and write Bngli.<='h; a large percentage of this class has better than a fair high- 


3 


^9Chool education, and a considerable numl)er are j^radiiates, or are students, of 
eolleges and universities. 

There are on the statute books some 370 treaties and over 2,000 specific laws 
relating: to Indians, all arising out of the i>eculiar relations which the Indians 
sustain toward the Government. In addition there are hundreds of State laws 
and court decisions, besides all the rules and regulations for the administration 
of Indian affairs arising out of congressional enactments, decisions of the Comp¬ 
troller of the Treasury (later the Comptroller General), opinions of the Attor¬ 
ney General, Executive orders issued by Presidents of the Ibiited States, and 
orders from Secretaries of the Interior. All this mass of legislation, decisions, 
rules and regulations have built up during many years a system of administra¬ 
tion of Indian affairs which has profoundly affected the Indian people, bene¬ 
ficially and otherwise. 

The economic conditions of the Indians have almost as wide a range as their 
tribal characteristics and their living conditions. In the Southwest where the 
natives for unknown generations have fought nature on their semiarid deserts 
and where they were irrigationists long before the advent of the white man, 
the Indians are natural farmers. On the Great Plains they are horsemen and 
take better to livestock raising. But, as a rule, excepting in the Southwest 
and in a few scattered communities, the Indians are not inclined to agricul¬ 
ture, although in recent years many of them have become fairly good farmers. 
On the northern Pacific coast are found the fish eating and fish catching In¬ 
dians; in the pine forests the Indians are natural woodsmen and have taken 
to lumbering. Within the past six years many Indians of Arizona have be¬ 
come cotton raisers and cotton-field hands. But most of the Indians are still 
too near the skin tent, the buffalo hunting days and the war trail to expect 
them at this time to take their place in the world as self-supporting farmers, 
mechanics or manufacturers. 

These few citations should be enough to indicate the manifold complexities 
of the Indian problem and to convey the impression that its practical solution 
can not be effected by appeals to sentiment, by loose talk, by destructive criti¬ 
cism, or by passing resolutions. Nor can recourse to history disclose a solu¬ 
tion, for conditions to-day are so different from what they were half a cen¬ 
tury ago that what happened 50 years back, when Indians were on the war 
path all over the West, can not be accepted as a guide for to-day. A review 
of the course of Government administration of Indian affairs, from the time 
the Bureau of Indian Affairs was instituted a century ago next March, might 
develop some of the causes whose unfavorable effects are known to-day, but 
it would be time wasted to shed tears over the past. “ What is now,” “ what 
might or should have been ” is the proposition to be considered by white 
people who are sincerely intei*ested in Indians and their welfare. 

UNITED STATES INDIAN SERVICE. 

In the early years of the United States, the War Department had charge 
of the Government relations with American Indian tribes. When the Depart¬ 
ment of the Interior was created by the act of INIarch 3, 1849, the administra¬ 
tion of Indian affairs was transferred to it from the War Department and 
thus the Indian passed from the control of the military to the supervision of 
a .civic branch of the United States Government. 

Congress has placed the responsibility of the care of the Indians in the 
hands of the Secretary of the Interior, who exercises his trust through the 
Bureau of Indian Affairs, a branch of the Department of the Interior. The 
Secretary (the present Secretary is the Hon. Hubert Work) has wide powers 


4 


of discretion within the limitations imposed by acts of Congress and these 
limitations descend to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, the chief execu¬ 
tive of the Bureau ^of Indian Affairs, commonly known as tlie Indian Service. 
The bureau is divided into two coordinating parts—the Indian Office in Wash¬ 
ington and the field service, whose personnel is in intimate contact with the 
Indian people. 

The Indian Service is unique among the Government organizations; there 
is nothing else like it in this country. It has been called “ a government 
within a government.” In a measure this is nearly true. There is scarcely 
an activity of human endeavor that does not come within the scope of the every¬ 
day work of the Indian Bureau. It literally begins to care for an Indian 
before he is born and looks after him after he is dead, for each year more and 
more Indian women seek the services provided in the maternity wards of Indian 
Service hospitals and the probate department of the bureau administers the 
estates of thousands of deceased red men. 

The Indian- Bureau is the gi*eat social service organization of the United 
States Government. It is one of the largest educational institutions in the 
world. It is a combination probate court, trust company, agricultural and 
live-stock corporation, mining company, oil concern, timber organization, pub¬ 
lic-health service, irrigation promoter, public roads commission, developer of 
natural resources, purchasing agent, town builder, municipal court, police 
department, board of county commissioners, orphan asylum, relief and aid 
society, philanthropical association, bank, and employment agency. And this 
list of its manifold activities is by no means complete. 

To carry on the multitudinous activities of the Indian Service there are 
something like 5,500 employees, of whom nearly 2,000 are persons of Indian 
blood, with a total payroll of nearly $4,500,000, or an average salary of about 
$815 a year. The Washington Indian Office has about 250 emploj^ees, with an 
annual payroll of less than $350,000 a year, making the average annual salary 
about $1,300. The superintendents, principals, teachers, and other employees, 
of the school service number 2,443, with a payroll of $1,742,000, an average 
salary of only $713. The total personnel of the reservations, agencies, and other 
field service units number 2,394, with a payroll of $1,796,000, an average 
yearly salary of $750. The other employees in the irrigation service, allot¬ 
ment (land) service, probate lawyers, experts of various kinds, the inspecting 
service, etc., number around 400, with a payroll of $613,500, making the average 
salary $1,500. Most of this last group are engineers, professional men and 
experts in their lines. It will thus be seen that the average annual salary of 
the entire Indian Service, exclusive of the salaries of the commissioner and 
assistant commissioner, $5,000 and $3,500, respectively, is $815. The Indian 
Service has the unenviable reputation of being the poorest paid of any Govern¬ 
ment organization. 

The Indian Office in Washington is divided into six divisions. The assistant 
commissioner, chief clerk, and the six chiefs of the divisions constitute the 
commissioner’s cabinet, although the frequent conferences held in his office 
are not called cabinet meetings. All administrative activities are divided so 
that each division has charge of the work that by its nature falls within its 
scope. The inspecting force reports of inspections and travel schedules of 
inspectors are handled by the inspection division; the education division not 
only attends to all matters relating to schools but its chief has charge of the 
medical service, the field matron service, and the activities relating to agri¬ 
culture, livestock raising, industries and the like. All matters relating to 
the handling of Indian lands pass through the land division. The finance 


5 


division includes the accounting offices and attends to the general financial 
business of the service. The purchase division buys or supervises the purchase 
of all supplies used in the Indian Service and the probate division handles an 
enormous number of Indian estates and is also the law division of the Indian 
Office. 

The commissioner is authorized by Congress to select and appoint five in¬ 
spectors, who, because of the confidential character of their work, are selected 
by him without civil-service requirements and are kept under his personal 
control. They are .sent by him to investigate conditions among the Indians, to 
look into charges preferred against any officer or employee, to take temporary 
charge of agencies when necessary, etc. The investigations conducted by 
Indian Office inspectors range from inquiries arising from mere criticism of the 
work of a superintendent or a minor employee to extended hearings of formal 
charges, wiiere the inspector presides with almost judicial authority, examining 
witnesses under oath. 

The great extent of the activities of the Indian Office can not be determined 
entirely by the fact that more than 300,000 communications are received by it 
each year, for one letter may initiate, as is often the case, a searching of records 
for many years back and the examinations of land transactions, monopolizing 
the time of a number of employees and leading to a great amount of corre¬ 
spondence. Thousands of reports come in from the field, many of them 
minutely detailing reservation operations and school management. Attorneys 
for whites and Indians are constantly calling for information only obtainable 
in the Indian Office. The commissioner almost daily holds conferences and 
hearings on matters of tlie utmost importance to Indians, brought before him 
by white men and Indians who travel thousands of miles to reach his office. 

The field service is grouped for administrative purposes into 95 “ agencies,” 
each with its superintendent, schools, and hospitals, if any. An agency may 
consist of but one “ reservation ” or it may comprise two or more reservations, 
with, perhaps, a number of scattered Indians living outside of any reservation. 
But every Federal-supervised Indian is connected with some agency; he is 
charged up to some superintendent or agent. In addition to the agencies, there 
are other “ units,” such as 20 large Indian hoarding schools, known as ” non¬ 
reservation ” schools because the pupils come from different reservations; a 
hospital for insane Indians at Canton, S. Dak., and a hospital for tubercular 
patients at Toledo, Iowa, etc. 

The basic feature of an agency is the reservation, which can be described as 
a tract of land set apart for the occupancy and use of Indians. In the begin¬ 
ning this use was exclusive, but white settlers began moving into the Indian 
country and Congress “ opened ” reservations for settlement under the home¬ 
stead law.s. That is, certain parts of tribal lands were sold to settlers, the 
proceeds deposited to the credit of the trihe in the United States Treasury and 
held for disposition in the discretion of Congress. A number of reservations 
are still “ closed ”; all the land has been allotted; that is, divided pro rata 
among the Indians, so there is no surplus land to be sold. Nevertheless, in 
almost every such closed reservation there will be found white settlers who 
have bought the allotments of deceased allottees under the rules and regulations 
of the Indian Bureau, which administers upon the estates of deceased Indians 
by virtue of acts of Congress. 

Keservations vary in size from tiny California rancherias of but a few 
acres to areas covering millions of acres. There are about 200 reservations. 
I.ess than 90 have resident superintendents. Some agencies compris-e half a 
dozen and more reservations and some single reservations contain represen- 


6 


tatives of half a dozen and more Indian tribes. Some of llie larger reserva¬ 
tions are: Navajo, Ariz. and N. Mex., 8,689,977 acres; San Jnan (Navajo), 
N. Mex. and Ariz., 2,300,000 acres; Blackfeet, Mont., 1,493,387 acres; Crow, 
Mont., 2,313,213 acres; Pine llidge (Sioux), S. Dak., 2,367,148 acres; Rose¬ 
bud (Sioux), S. Dak., 1,784,063 acres; Colville (several tribes). Wash., 
1,347,989 acres; Hopi (Hopi and Navajo), Ariz., 2,472,320 acres; Papago, 
Ariz., 2,649,600 acres. 

Reservations were instituted in various ways; some by treaties others b.y 
agreements between the United States and Indians ratified by Congress which 
had the effect of treaties; some by Executive orders of Presidents of the 
United States; still others by purchase directed by Congress. In addition 
Congress authorized tlie purchase of numerous small tracts of land, most of 
which are in California, for the occupancy of “ landless Indians ” but which are 
still owned by the Government. Some reservations are such only in name, such 
as those of the Cherokee. Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Seminole Tribes 
composing the Five Civilized Tribes in Oklahoma. They were allotted to the 
Indians years ago, most of the allotments have been sold and there are large 
and growing cities on what once were real Indian reservations. 

The superintendent in charge of an agency, whether it consists of.but a 
single reservation or of several, is a pocket edition of the Commissioner of 
Indian Affairs as respects his duties, perplexities and responsibilities. His 
is a many-sided job. He is face to face with the Indian problem and all of 
its complexities 24 hours a day for every day in the year. Most superin¬ 
tendents are also “special disbursing agents” under bond, the premium of 
which must be paid out of their meager salaries. A sui^rintendent is held 
strictly accountable for every penny of Government, Indian individual and 
tribal money, which passes through his hands, and for all tools, materials, 
imi)lements, and also for all Indian property and cash held in trust by him 
for the Indians. The Commissioner of Indian Aifairs holds him responsible 
for the maintenance of law and order on his reservation and for the carrying 
out of all orders coming from the Indian Office; for the effective operation of 
schools, hospitals, etc.; for the condition of roads and for the progress and 
welfare of the Indians in his charge. 

He has no sinecure. On one side of him is the Government with its ada¬ 
mant requirement of 100 per cent accountability; on the other side are a score 
or more of employees, living in an isolated community whose very isolation 
tends to breeding petty jealousies and factional cliques, and hundreds of 
Indians each with his problem, demand, complaint, and request. He is 
subjected to frequent charges preferred against him by disgruntled employees 
and dissatisfied Indians or by white men who assert he has not treated them 
fairjy. All charges, if deemed of enough importance, are investigated by 
inspectors from the Indian Office and action taken if necessfiry. 

On many agencies one of the most important duties of the superintendent 
is the handling of the land business of the Indians. Where the Indians have 
received their pro rata allotments of tribal lands they are encouraged to farm 
them. This is in line with the long established policy to educate Indians to 
become self-supporting farmers. For a long time the effort was most dis¬ 
couraging. But within recent years results have been much better, for more 
and more Indians have taken to farming as a regular vocation. There still, 
however, is much to be desired along that line. And, in the opinion of well- 
informed persons, the reluctance of many Indians to farm for themselves is 
largely due to the leasing system by which white people lease Indian farm 
lands, thus making Indians landlords and building up the tenant system within 
reservations. 


I 


The justification for what has been called an “evil,” that is permitting 
Indians to lease their lands, is that the Indians will not farm themselves and 
the land should be put to productive use in some way. The actual result of 
the leasing policy is that hundreds and hundreds of Indians are leading idle 
lives, loafing and doing worse than that, because they are receiving revenues 
from land rentals, the revenues, however, in most cases being only enough to 
allow them to barely exist. It is held by friends of the Indians that before 
they are permitted to lease any land they should be made to cultivate enough 
to partially support themselves, at least. 

Some Indians make their own leases and collect the rentals themselves but, 
as a general rule the leases are made through the superintendent who also 
collects the lease money which he pays over to the Indian. It can thus be 
seen that in such cases the Indian does nothing for himself; he is not learning, 
perhaps by sad experience, how to manage his own affairs, how to deal with 
his white neighbors. He is not even trying to get away from the business 
of being an Indian. 

Besides attending, in many cases, to the leasing of Indian lands, a superin¬ 
tendent sells the land, either to settle an estate or to secure funds for the 
use of the Indian. If there is timber land on the reservation he must go into 
the logging, milling, and general timber business for the Indians; if there is 
oil he must look after the leasing of oil land, check up drilling and operation, 
collect the oil rentals and bonuses, and disburse the funds among the Indian 
owners. In the Osage Agency, Okla., the superintendent handles nearly 
$50,000,000 a year of oil rental and bonus money, distributing from $10,000 
to $12,000 annually to each of the enrolled members of the tribe. On the 
Menominee Reservation, Wis., the superintendent operates a large saw mill; 
on the Fort Berthold Reservation, N. Dak., the superintendent transacts a 
large livestock business for his Indians. There are several agencies where 
the revenues from Ind’an-owned property, managed by the superintendent, 
runs up to $100,000 and more each year. 

Besides handling most of the property of the Indians the superintendent is 
charged with the duties of encouraging the Indians to farm, to raise livestock, 
to make hay, to build better houses and barns, to make gardens and raise 
chickens, to keep their homes clean, to send their children to school; in short 
to get them ready to take their places as full-fledged citizens in the body 
politic of the Nation. Besides, he has to fight bootleggers and moonshiners, 
check gambling, preserve law and order, iron out factional troubles, make 
rop^>iTs to Washington and keep his accounts straight. 

If there is a boarding school on the reservation he has the task of educating, 
clothing, feeding, amusing, doctoring, disciplining and generally looking after 
from 100 to 200 or more Indian children, fresh from the wild, many of whom 
can scarcely speak the English language when they first come to school. And 
yet, by act of Congress, he must do all this at a maximum expense of from $225 
to $250 per pupil per school year. How he is able to do this is explained 

furtlier on. 

To help him in his multitudinous activities he has a staff of Indian Service 
employees. Their number and the nature of their positions depend upon the 
agency’s Indian population, whether the land is allotted or not, the presence 
or absence of schools, hospitals, and industries, etc. If the land is not allotted 
and there is no boarding school, hospital, sawmill or other industry, the agency 
staff would consist of the superintendent and two or three clerks. This would 
be an adequate agency force even if the Indian population were several times 
as large as that of another agency where the land was allotted, where there 
was a boarding school, day schools, a hospital, etc. The number of Indians on 
a reservation is not the only gauge by which the reservation staff is measured. 

65946—23- 3 


8 


The administration of the affairs of a typical Indian agency centers in the 
superintendent’s office which is located at the “agency.” Here is a little com¬ 
munity of white folk, set in among tlie Indian people. Here are the homes of 
the superintendent and employees; the offices and storehouses; the home of 
the missionary if one is detailed there and his little mission church. In all 
probability there are two or more general stores, kept by licensed Indian traders, 
and one of them generally is the post office, also. The agency buildings may 
form a quadrangle with a turfed park in the center, perhaps with walks across 
it, and may be a tennis court or two. In some parts of the treeless plains 
and the semiarid sections the trees and grass of an agency, by contrast with 
the bare prairie and desert, have all the beauty of a city’s highly improved 
park. But th.ere are many agencies so lacking in beauty, natural or man-made, 
that it is difficult to understand why white people will live in them. 

The boarding school, in this typical agency, may be located at the agency, 
or it may be several miles distant. A principal, or head teacher, under the 
supervision of the superintendent, is in direct charge of the school whose staff 
consists of teachers, matrons for the boys and girls dormitories, the engineers 
who handle the heating and lighting plants, the farmer who looks after the 
school’s garden, the blacksmith, the baker, the disciplinarian who might 
well be called the athletic director, the seamstress, the school cook, the din¬ 
ing room matron, and the cook and her help for the employees mess. The 
mechanical and domestic employees also are teachers for they are expected 
not only to operate the boilers, engines, electrical equipment and pumps, the 
machine shop, the blacksmith shop, the kitchen, the bakery, the sewing room, 
etc., but to give vocational teaching and training to the Indian boys and 
courses of the domestic arts and science to the girls. The reservation board¬ 
ing and day schools are treated at length in these memoranda, under “Educa¬ 
tion.” 

The hospital, connected with the boarding school of this typical agency, is 
in charge of the Indian Service physician, who also is under the jurisdiction 
of the superintendent, although the latter is a layman. The school physician 
also is the reservation physician, and is expected to respond to calls from 
Indians. He may be assisted by “field matrons,” women who go out among 
the Indian families, teach sanitation and elementary domestic science to 
Indian women, check up school truants, perform the simpler services in nurs¬ 
ing, and report cases of sickness. The question of policy concerning the health 
of Indians is discussed under the heading “Indian medical service.” 

This typical agency has an “agency” farm which partakes somewhat of the 
nature of demonstration farm. There is connected with the boarding school 
a vegetable garden, with perhaps an orchard and poultry yard. In connec¬ 
tion with the agency or school farm there is a dairy herd, some livestock and 
pigs, and probably there are some thoroughbread bulls, stallions, and boars 
for breeding up Indian livestock. Neither the farm nor livestock belongs to 
the Indians; they are owned by the Indian Service. There may be on the 
reservation, a tribal herd, but in recent years Congress has not been as kindly 
disposed toward tribal owned herds as it formerly was. 

The agency is divided into what are known as “farmers districts”; each in 
charge of an Indian Service farmer who is something like a subagent. In 
theory the farmer is a teacher of agriculture and livestock raising. Where 
the land is not allotted this theory is a fact, but on reservations of extensive 
area, where the lands have been allotted, the farmer is more of a field clerk. 
He lives within his district; his home may be 20 to 50 miles from the agency, 
and the Indians living in his district look to him as their personal representa- 


9 


tive ill their relations with the agency. Where there is much leasing of lands 
the farmer, who is expected to attend to this business, is so occupied with 
the making of leases, the collection of rentals, the settlement of disputes, the 
surveying of allotments, etc., that he has little or no time left to teach his 
Indians much of the art of agriculture. 

This position is one of the most important in the Indian' Service. An active, 
conscientious, capable “ farmer ” is one of the most effective agents of the 
Indian Service in forwarding the progress of the Indians. His is a most essen¬ 
tial position even if he does not show^ an Indian how to handle a cultivator 
or plow a furrow. There is need, a great need, of real agriculture teachers 
in almost every reservation, but there is also great need of what are really 
field clerks, which most “ farmers ” really are. They should be given a title 
more nearly descriptive of their position which actually is ttuit of a sub or 
assistant superintendent. Calling them “ farmers ” invites the inference 
that their sole duty is agricultural instruction. It is quite true that mar.y of 
them do encourage and instruct Indians in farming, but it also is true that 
but few’ of them devote their entire time to this kind of w’ork. 

The little day schools, where the small Indian children begin their education, 
are generally found near the farmers’ stations. Each school has its teacher and 
housekeeper, the latter preparing the noonday lunch wdiich is given the children 
in most day schools. The day-school teacher does more tlian teach the three 
primary grades through which his pupils pass; he also is something of a sub¬ 
agent, for his school and home are in an Indian community, and in time, if he 
is the right kind of a teacher, he becomes the trusted friend of his Indians. 
The day schools are described under “ Education.” 

Some reservations of large areas have field-matron districts wdiich may be 
coextensive with farmers district. The field matron, living with the family 
of the farmer or day-school teacher, or she may have a home of her own, is a 
social-service wmrker, a nurse, a domestic-science teacher, a health officer, a 
home and school visitor, and by becoming the family friend, has unique oppor¬ 
tunities to break through the barrier wffiich Indian w’omen raise around their 
homes against white people. She is called, in some tribes, the “ going-around 
woman.” 

In the judgment of those who have studied the problems relating to Indian 
progress the Indian wmmen are more reactionary than the men in so far as 
tribal customs and w^ays of living are concerned. The opinion has been ex¬ 
pressed by informed persons that Indians would make faster progress in 
civilization if the women could be brought to see the value of modern ways 
and customs. To this end, it is held, the Indian Service should build up a 
stronger field-matron service, for only w’omen can reach Indinn mothers. 
Apparently the real value of an efficient, tactful, and w^ell-trained field matron 
has not been fully appreciated by the Indian Bureau. There are even some 
superintendents wdio are opposed to the use of field matrons. 

Within what might be called recent times, oil has been discovered upon a 
number of Indian reservations and their superintendents had added to their 
normal duties the business of producing oil. Oil has made the Osage Indians 
of northern Oklahoma the richest people, per capita, on earth. Their oil is 
reserved for the tribe; even white purchasers of Osage allotments can have no 
interest in the oil under their farms until 1946. In 1922 more than 29,000,000 
barrels of oil were produced on Osage lands. The office of the superintendent 
of the Osages is a twm-story, modern brick structure, equipped with every 
modern device for bookkeeping, filing, and the like. It is in every sense of the 
w’ord an up-to-date office of a large oil corporation. 


10 


T’^e aj^eiicies of the Pawnee, Otoe, Kiowa, Crow, r>lackfeet, and Navajo 
Indians shortly may be of like character to the Osage Agency for oil has been 
discovered in those sections. The agency headquarters of the Five Civilized 
Tribes (the Cherokee, Creek, Chickasaw, Choctaw, and Seminole in Oklahoma) 
are at Muskogee. It has a well organized oil leasing section which handles 
millions of dollars each year, mostly for individual Creek oil land owners. 
The oil in these tribal holdings was not reserved for the tribes. 

EDUCATION. 

In the education of the Indian children, the Indian Service has scored its 
highest mark. At this writing (September, 1923), reports from the field 
indicate that every school which the Government maintains and operates for 
the boys and girls of Indians will be crowded beyond its capacity this school 
year; that in all parts of the Indian country the parents of the little Indians 
are showing more real interest in the schools than ever before. When it is 
considered that less than 20 years ago Indian parents generally were either 
indifferent or openly antagonistic to their children attending school, that 
measures little short of kidnapping often were resorted to by Indian school people 
to get Indian children into some school, the situation to-day offers a contrast as 
great as it is gratifying. After many years of discouragement, of apparently 
small results which caused much criticism against the government’s educa¬ 
tional policy in and out of Congress, there now seems to be every indication 
that .success in educating Indian children has been attained. 

A half century ago the Government seems to have had but little interest 
in Indian schooling; Congress appropriated only a few thousand dollars for 
the purpose each year, mostly to aid mission schools in reservations. Then 
the Indian Bureau began sprinkling little day schools over some reservations. 
It was necessary in those days to employ men oidy for teachers; the turbulent 
conditions made it unsafe to use women; Indian day-school teachers carried 
arms in those times and sometimes had to use them. In 1877 Congress appro¬ 
priated $20, 000 for the use of schools for one year. Two years later, 1879, 
the Carlisle Indian School, in Carlisle, Pa., was opened with Captain (now 
General) Pratt in charge. This was the first “nonreservation” boarding 
school in the service and that year Congress trebled its appropriation. In 
1879 the Indian schools consisted of 52 boarding schools and 107 day schools 
with a total attendance of 4,448 pupils. To-day there are in the school 
system of the Indian Bureau 170 day schools, with a total enrollment of 
5,548; 03 reservation and tribal boarding schools with a total enrollment 
of 9, 434 and 20 nonreservation boarding schools with an enrollment of 9, 240. 
In addition to the Government .schools there are 81 mission boarding and day 
schools, with a total enrollment of 6,000, and 34,301 Indian children are 
enrolled in public schools. The annual appropriation by Congress for the 
education of Indian children approximates $5, 000, 000 each year and promises 
to be largely increased in the near future. Those figures show the wonderful 
development of the Indian Bureau’s school system and are deeply significant 
for they tell, as nothing else can tell, of the startling progress which the 
Indian people are making on the way to civilization. 

The last available figures on school attendance show that last year there 
were approximately 92,000 Indian children of school age under the supervi- 
.sion of the Government. Of this number some 6,200, for one reason or an¬ 
other, were not able to attend any school, leaving approximately 85,500 who 
were eligil)le for attendance. The total number of children reported as attend¬ 
ing some school was approximately 65,000 showing that some 20,800 children, 
who could attend school, were not attending any school. Almost one-third of 


11 


tins iiuiiiber were Navajo children, over 6,500 of whom were not in school. 
This particular situaf.on presents one of the most perplexing problems in the 
education of Indian children. The Indian Bureau is endeavoring to solve it. 
but the solution depends almost entirely upon the action which Congress may 
take in the matter. If Congress will make the required appropriation the 
solution of the Navajo school problem will be comparatively simple for money 
alone is needed to allow the Indian Bureau to carry out its plans for taking care 
of the more than 6,000 schoolless children of the Navajo shepherds of Arizona 
and New Mexico. 

The Government schools took care of 24,200 children, 6,400 were in private 
and mission schools and about 34,000 were enrolled in public schools. The 
total capacity of all Government schools was 24,000. The Government schools 
are of three kinds—-day, reservation boarding, and nonreservation boarding. 
The Indian children begin their education in the little day schools which 
correspond to rural public schools and in which the first three grades are 
taught. They then go to the reservation boarding school where, in addition 
to the fourth, fifth and sixth grades therei are courses in agriculture, me¬ 
chanics, and the domestic sciences. The majority of the Indian children get 
no further than the reservation boarding schools. In the large nonreserva¬ 
tion boarding schools the seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth grades are taught 
(in one school two additional grades are added) and there are complete voca¬ 
tional courses taught in a most practical way. 

Thousands of Indian children have received their first lesson in English in 
the little Indian day schools. And thousands more will begin their study 
of English in the same little schools. This statement may cause some sur¬ 
prise for it seems incredible that there are in this country so many native- 
born people who neither speak nor write English. But such is the fact 
.with Indians. It is not uncommon to see in a day school little tots of 5 and 
6 years or age sitting besides large boys and girls from 15 to 18 years old 

and older, all struggling with the primary elements of the English lan¬ 

guage. On many reservations the day-school teacher must first get his pupils 
to talk and understand the white man’s tongue. Most Indian boys and girls 
are apt pupils and quickly learn their lessons; others are dull and back¬ 
ward. In this respect they do not differ from white children. 

In locating a day school the effort is made to place it where it will be most 
convenient to the largest number of children, provided water is available. 
The day-school plant consists of the school building usually of frame con¬ 
struction and large enough to contain a room for 40 or 50 scholars, another 
room for a combined kitchen and dining room, closets, etc. It has all the 
appearance of a little country school and always has a flag pole from which 
the national flag flies during school hours. One of the first drills taught 
Indian children is to salute the Nation’s flag when it is hoisted just before 
school opens, and again when it is lowered after school. The home of the 
teacher is near the school house; sometimes the home of the Indian Service 
farmer, an Indian trading store and, perhaps a mission church, make a little 

community which becomes the center of all Government and Indian activities 

of the district. 

Generally a vegetable garden is laid out near the school, for the children 
are taught the elements of agriculture and even some of the simple mechanical 
arts which are developed through elementary manual training. Phe girls aie 
taught sewing, cooking, how to make up beds, do housewoik, caie for babies 
and*^ chickens, and both boys and girls are required to perform some useful 
work, such as mending fences, making little repairs around the school, cleaning 


12 


the school, helping cook the noon clay lunch which is given children, mending 
clothing, etc. 

A married couple is preferred for teacher and housekeeper, or a mother and 
daughter or two sisters, for the location of a day school is generally isolated 
and often is from 25 to 50 miles from the agency headquarters. The right 
kind of teacher and housekeeper can, and do, make their school and home a 
real social-service center whose influence extends into the family circles of 
the Indians. The present Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Mr. Burke, is an 
ardent advocate of the little day schools. In his 1921 annual report he writes: 

“ The day school is the means of gradually withdrawing gratuitous support 
from Indians. It gives them little or no aid in clothing and subsistence, but 
it carries civilization to the great mass of Indian homes, while other types 
of schools do not afford this opportunity so well.- The influence of the day 
schools, planted almost at the door of Indian homes, is not limited to the 
children alone but reaches out to the parents and entire community and every 
day leaves its permanent mark. It becomes, when properly equipped, managed, 
and in the hands of competent teachers, the center of community interests. 
All kinds of helpful activities in farming, dairying, gardening, stock raising, 
cooking, canning, sewing, nursing, household management, and sanitation may 
be and are being introduced into these communities, thus increasing the assets 
of the Nation by improving farming areas and the saving of many lives.” 

A reservation boarding school is just what its name says it is; a boarding 
school for the Indian children of the reservation of which it is a part. It 
generally is located near the agency. Where there are no day schools in the 
reservation the children begin their education in the boarding school which 
then teaches the first six grades. The school is in charge of a principal or 
head teacher who is subordinate to the superintendent of the agency. If the 
school has a hospital the resident physician is a member of the school staff 
and also is the reservation physician. In the Five Civilized Tribes of Okla¬ 
homa are boarding schools known as tribal schools. The only difference 
between them and the others is that their support comes from tribal funds. 
The capacifes of reservation boarding schools vary from 50 to 335; some 
of the schools take in children from other reservations. 

The plant of a reservation boarding school consists of the boys, and girls, 
dormitories; the school house where recitations are held and in which there 
is genernlly an assembly room for chapel services, lectures, moving picture 
shows, other kinds of entertainments, etc., the office of the principal, the 
library and rooms for student societies. The dining room for the children, 
with the kitchen in many places is in a dormitory building; in other schools 
it is in a separate building. Some schools have play rooms, or gymnasiums; 
all should have them and there is generally play ground apparatus for the 
pupils. Some schools have bands and all have their athletic teams; foot 
ball, base ball, basket ball, track teams, etc. Indian children take naturally 
to athletic sports and generally the teams of the boarding school are the 
champions of their part of the country. 

Academic instruction is supplemented by vocational training. Every school 
has its farm and garden, its live stock, dairy herd, pigs and chickens, orchard, 
machine shops, carpenter shops, etc. There also are rooms equipped for 
teaching tlie domestic arts, such as sewing, cooking, housekeeping and the 
like. Every student is required t() make up his or her bed and clean the 
room or a designated part of the dormitory; the halls, porches, sidewalks, 
grounds, offices and school rooms are cleaned by students; the girls assist the 
school cook, keep the kitchen and its utensils, the dining room and cup¬ 
boards clean, clear up the tables after meals and clean the dishes. The boys 
milk the cows, do all the dairy work, feed and care for all the cattle, help 


13 


the fnrmer raise garden truck and farm crops, help the machinist, the 
blacksmith, the carpenter, the baker, the shoemaker, the tailor, etc. All 
of the work, commonly performed by i)aid help in white boarding schools, is 
done by the Indian students under the direction of the few white members 
of the school staff. 

In short, the students in the Indian Service reservation and nonreserva¬ 
tion boarding schools work their way through school. This means that only 
about half of the day is given to schooling; the balance is taken up by 
work, play and study. In all Government boarding schools the students are 
taught, boarded, lodged, and clothed by the Government who also provides for 
them medical service, amusement and pays their transportation expenses 
from and to their homes. 

By limitations imposed by Congress all this expense must be kept within 
$225 to $250 per capita in the case of reservation boarding school and $200 in 
the case of the large non reservation boarding schools. It would be impossible 
to do this unless the students themselves furnished the great part of the labor 
necessary to operate the schools. Much, in some schools most, of the vegetables, 
milk, eggs, meat, etc., are the products of school gardens, and farms and the 
students under skilled supervision, are the little gardeners, farmers, dairymen, 
livestock raisers, poultry raisers, canners, cooks, waitresses and general help. 
The girls also assist in the hospital, some of them becoming capable nurses; 
other girls and boys learn typewriting and bookkeeping and help out in the 
offices. The Indian student as one of them put it “ has no easy snap.” But 
all this work tends to develop in them habits of industry and gives them 
practical knowledge which stands them in good stead when they leave school 
to shift for themselves. 

A nonreservation school is a boarding school that is not connected with an 
agency. It is a separate Indian Service unit with a superintendent. There 
are 20 of such schools conveniently located, with respect to railroads, and 
near or in large centers of population. Their capacities range from 175 to 
over 850. The larger nonreservation schools are Haskell Institute, Lawrence, 
Kans., average enrollment 822; Sherman Institute, Riverside, Calif., average 
enrollment 837; Phoenix School, Phoenix, Ariz., average enrollment 738; 
Chilocco School, Chilocco, Okla., average enrollment 651; Salem School, Che- 
mawa, Greg., average enrollment 691; Albuquerque School, Albuquerque, 
N. Mex., average enrollment 508; Santn Pe School, Santa Fe, N. Mex., average 
enrollment 399; Carson School near Carson City, Nev., average enrollment 433; 
Genoa School, Genoa, Nebr., average enrollment 426; Mount Pleasant School, 
Mount Pleasant, Mich., average enrollment 339. 

Although the nonreservation schools have grades corresponding with public 
high schools they are colleges to the Indian youth. Comparatively few Indian 
boys and girls get beyond these institutions in their schooling. In fact they 
might well be called the finishing schools of the Indian Service. Their students 
come from reservations, tribal and mission boarding schools and are supposed 
to have passed through the first six grades. What is written concerning the 
routine, life and activities of reservation boarding schools applies to nonreser¬ 
vation schools but with emphasis for the latter institution are so much bigger 
and every student body is so much larger that everything in them is on a 
more elaborate scale. Vocational training in all these schools is carried to 
a far greater extent than in the reservation boarding schools, and there are 
more courses. Some of these nonreservation schools have large machine shops, 
printing establishment, special shops for teaching automotive trades, etc. There 
are commercial schools connected with them in which bookkeeping, office 


14 


management, stenography, etc., are taught and that this course has proved to be 
a great success is demonstrated by the large number of graduates, and students 
who did not graduate, who are holding responsible positions in banks, oil cor¬ 
porations, wholesale houses, and the like. 

All students in nonreservation schools wear uniforms when not at work in 
the shops, tields, kitchens, etc., and a semimilitary discipline is maintained. 
There is a real college atmosphere in these schools; students become very much 
attached to their alma mater. The schools have good libraries which are con¬ 
stantly used by the students, for all of them have literary, debating, and dra¬ 
matic societies, students’ clubs, and reading circles. Educators of national 
reputation, who have studied these nonreservation schools, are unanimous in 
the opinion that they are not excelled by any white school of like character in 
academic and vocational training, and that they provide the most satisfactory 
means for educating the Indian youth. 

The whole program of the Indian Service educational system has underly¬ 
ing it the purpose of preparing the Indian children for coeducation with white 
children in public schools and colleges. Educators, whose opinions are re¬ 
garded with great respect in this country, approve the purpose, but feel that 
the Indian Service officials are somewhat too optimistic in their claims that 
the public schools are giving the Indian children who attend them a good 
education. The reports of the Indian Office indicate that something like 34,000 
Indian boys and girls are “ enrolled ” in public schools. In most school dis¬ 
tricts the Government pays the local school authorities tuition for Indian 
pupils, ranging from 15 cents to 50 cents a day. Investigations made by per¬ 
sons who are not concerned with the Indian Service have satisfied them that in 
many public schools where Indian children are “ enrolled ” their attendance 
is so irregular that they are practically receiving no benefit from the schools. 
This irregularity in attendance is due to several causes. Indian children are 
peculiarly sensitive to ridicule, and in a considerable number of districts 
where conditions were investigated it was found that the Avhite children ridi¬ 
culed their Indian playmates who, because of that, refused to go to school. In 
some school districts the white people were opposed to Indian children in the 
public schools. The poverty of Indian parents also affected attendance, and 
in many districts the Indian habit of visiting around took many children out 
of the public schools. 

But the principal cause of irregular attendance was found to be the back¬ 
wardness of Indian children in the use of the English langiuige, their natural 
bashfulness, and their native pride, which made the larger Indian boys and 
girls ashamed to sit in the lower grades with small white children. There 
seems to be no escaping the conclusion that the Indian Service should exercise 
extreme caution in transferring the Indian children to public schools, and 
this would seem to call for the building and operation of more day schools on 
reservations in which the little Indians could get a start in English. 

For administrative purposes the country is divided into seven school super¬ 
visor districts, each in charge of a school supervisor, who reports to the chief 
supervisor of schools. They are constantly traveling from one reservation to 
another, visiting schools for purposes of inspection and investigation. The 
chief supervisor of schools is called the “ head ” of the Indian school system. 
In a large degree he is not, for his acts are subject to review by the chief of 
the education section in the Indian Office. It has been urged by educators who 
are not connected with the Indian Bureau, but who are much interested in 
Indian education, that the schools should be constituted as a section of the 
bureau, with a chief in charge,, who w'ould report only to the commissioner. 


INDIAN MEDICAL SERVICE. 


The Indian medical service has charge of the health of supervised Indians. 
The Government maintains 85 hospitals and tuberculosis sanitariums with a 
total capacity of 2,190 beds for an Indian population of approximately 240,000, 
which is grouped in some 200 reservations and agencies, located in 24 States. 
On the surface this equipment would seem to provide one bed for every 137 
Indians. But of the 2,190 beds, 528 are in hospitals of nonreservation schools 
and are, therefore, limited in their use to Indian pupils; 92 are in the Canton 
Hospital for the Insane Indians and 573 are in 11 tuberculosis sanitariums and, 
therefore, are not available for general hospital purposes. The remaining 997 
beds are'in the 57 hospitals connected with agencies and reservation boarding 
schools and they are the only ones available for reservation Indians, although 
some reservation Indians are treated occasionally in nonreservation school 
hospitals and some general cases are taken in the tuberculosis sanitariums. 
This showing clearly indicates the crying need for more hospitals for the 
general use of reservation Indians. It also discloses the fact that in its medical 
service the Indian Bureau is weak, where it ought to be as strong as it is 
in its school system. 

At the close of the last fiscal year, June 30, 1923, there were 161 physicians, 
6 traveling dentists, and 3 traveling specialists in eye diseases in the medical 
service. Of this number 56 were “contract” physicians who gave but part of 
their time to the Indians. There were 16 vacancies in the list of Indian 
Service doctors. Five agency superintendents happen to be doctors and they 
are called upon to “double” as Indian Service physicians in addition to their 
duties as executives of the agency. As a rule school physicians do not do 
much reservation work; they have not the time. Contract physicians are in 
private practice in white communities within reach of reservations or schools. 
They enter into contracts with the Indian Service to make a specified minimum 
number of professional visits and to perform other medical service for from 
$200 to $720 a year. 

It is obvious that they must look first after their white patients; the Indians 
come next. There are agencies where the number of Indians would not warrant 
the entire time of a physician; in such places the employment of a contract 
doctor is eminently proper. But there are agencies now served by contract 
physicians where the Indian population is large enough to need the exclusive 
services of an Indian Service physician. He is kept out largely by considerations 
of economy. This is believed to be the wrong kind of economy—it is saving 
dollars at the expense of Indian health and, perhaps, lives. 

The last published health statistics of the Indian Bureau, 1920, show that 
in that year 6,070 Indians died, and that 1,230 or 20 per cent of the deaths 
were due to tuberculosis, and 1,436 or 25 per cent were of children under 3 
years of age. In 1920 the medical officers of the Indian Service, after ex¬ 
amining 66,718 Indians, estimated that 24,773 had tuberculosis, latent and 
active; and 30,795 were afflicted with the dreadful but preventable eye dis¬ 
ease, trachoma. Tuberculosis kills; trachoma, unchecked, ends in blindness 
as the many blind men and women on Indian reservations can testify. The 
death rate for the United States, as a whole, in 1920 was 13.8 per thousand 
as against 22.33 for Indians. Seven year before, 1913, the death rate among 
Indians w^as reported as 32.24. The decrease of 9.91 per thousand in the seven 
years is most significant in view of the fact that in 1911 only $40,000 was 
appropriated by Congress for health work among Indians, and in 1920 this 
had been increased to $370,000. The operation of cause (more money for 


16 


health work) and effect (a large reduction in the death rate) is perfectly 
obvious. It seems to prove that given the means the Indian Service can save 
many Indian lives. 

The annual reports of Commissioners of Indian Affairs for many years have 
deplored the insufficiency of the Indian medical service. They again and again 
called the attention of Congress to the paltry salaries of Indian Service 
physicians, to their unattractive living and working conditions, to the inade¬ 
quacy of the hospital equipment, and to the need of more trained nurses. 
But Congress, while increasing the general appropriation for health work, has 
refused to authorize an increase in physicians’ salaries, and Congress is the 
only source of authority for this increase. 

The entrance salary for Indian Service physicians is ridiculously small, only 
$1,100 a year, with quarters, light and heat. The highest salary paid any 
reservation physician is $1,600; two receive that amount. The average sal¬ 
ary is but $1,200. Granting that $300 a year is a fair estimate of the value 
average of quarters, heat and light, making the average salary $1,500, the 
professional men detailed to attend to the health of Indians get less than day 
laborers in the District of Columbia are paid. 

Ostensibly the Indian medical service has for its head a physician with the 
title “chief medical supervisor.” Actually he is subordinate to the chief of 
the education division of the Indian Office who is not a physician. The chief 
medical supervisor, in fact, is but little more than a traveling inspector. He 
spends much of his time in the field, and is under the orders of the chief of 
the education division, who under the commissioner is the actual head of^'the 
Indian medical service. In this way the medical service, so far as its gen¬ 
eral supervision is concerned, is tied up with the management of the schools, 
the encouragement of agriculture among the Indians, the bettering of the 
breeds of Navajo sheep, the fostering of industrial pursuits among Indians, the 
employment of Indians and several other highly important activities which 
come under the office care of the chief of the education division. 

Several futile efforts have been made to have the Indian medical service 
taken over by the United States Public Health Service, Many sound argu¬ 
ments can be presented in favor of the proposition but it is doubtful, taking 
everything into consideration, if the scheme is practical. It has been urged 
that the medical service should be reorganized into an independent division 
presided over by a chief who would be a physician; that he, under the general 
supervision of the commissioner, should have independent charge of all health 
work in the Indian Service; that all Indian Service physicians should be made 
public health officers and be absolutely independent of superintendents to whom 
they are now subordinate, reporting only to the chief of the medical service. 
If this sort of reorganization were made it is believed the whole medical service 
would function so much more effectively that Congress might be w^on over ta 
the constant plea to increase the salaries of phj^sicians, nurses, and field 
matrons. 

In 1913 the United States Public Health Service conducted a survey of the 
Indian medical service. Its report contained the following significant para¬ 
graph : 

“ The medical branch of the Office of Indian Affairs is hampered in ac¬ 
complishing effective work in curing and preventing diseases {a) because of 
insufficient authority in medical and sanitary matters, (h) because of existing 
obstacles, such as racial characteristics, present economic status of the Indian 
and varying physical conditions on reservations; (c) because of inadequate 
compensation, absence of reasonable expectation of promotion, lack of esprit 
de corps and coordinated organization.” 


17 


IRRIGATION. 

Approximately one and a half million acres of Indian owned land are sus¬ 
ceptible of irrigation. The task of developing this land by bringing water to 
it is the work of the irrigation section of the Indian Bureau which is a minia¬ 
ture reclamation service. It does for Indians what the Bureau of Reclama¬ 
tion is doing for white people and, in addition, it teaches the Indians the 
practical art of “ mud farming,” and encourages them to develop their irri¬ 
gated tracts along the lines of modern irrigation practice. The irrigation 
enterprises are financed by what are practically Government loans to tribes, 
these are called reimbursable appropriations and are authorized by Congress. 
The theory is that the tribes will repay the Government for the funds advanced 
either through deferred payments made by individual Indians, or through 
the sale of tribal lands, timber, minerals, etc. In loaning this money the 
Government in every case is well protected by the ample security back of 
the loan. 

The irrigation projects on Indian reservations are 77 in number, ranging 
in size from tiny patches of 15 acres up to areas of 150,000. Over 40 of 
these projects are completed. Reference to the statictics appended to these 
memoTanda will show that 733,016 acres now are under project, that con¬ 
struction charges to June 30, 1920 (the date of the latest available figures), 
was $18,405,802 and that the prospective irrigable area is 941,210 acres. 

The Indians of the Southwest, as has been indicated above, were irrigation 
farmers long before the advent of the white men. The irrigation projects in 
this country are used by them practically up to the limit. But this is not the 
fact among the northern tribes. They are taking but slowly to this .form of 
agriculture, but, by the same token, they have not been swift to take up 
ordinary farming practices. Every dollar spent for Indian irrigation is well 
spent for if time proves that the Indians, for whom the irrigation canals, 
lateral ditches, dams, etc., were constructed for the purpose of bringing water 
to dry land and thus make them agidculturally useful, fail to to take advan¬ 
tage of what was done for them, the irrigated lands can be sold to whites 
at such an advanced price over the value of raw land that the Indian owners 
will make money out of the transaction. The appended statistics, under the 
heading “Irrigation,” give some information which may prove of interest. 

The irrigation section of the Indian Office is one of the most effective 
branches of the Bureau of Indian Affairs; it is* accomplishing results which 
can not be shown by mere data but which are of inestimable value to the 
Indians. This work is under the charge of the chief of the irrigation 
division of the Indian Bureau, an engineer, and he has several engineers as 
his assistants. Indian labor is employed as much as possible in construction 
work. One of the most important features, of this activity of the Indian 
Bureau is the development of underground water supplies for Indian livestock 
and for irrigation. The Navajo Indians, living in the semiarid belt, have a 
saying “where there is water there is no grass; where there is grass there 
is no water.” The irrigation section by drilling wells every 6 miles through 
the Navajo country is making this ancient saw a memory, for wells in areas 
where there is grass and no water are opening up tens of thousands ,of 
acres of grazing land for the Navajo shepherds. 

INDIAN FORESTS. 

It is estimated there are 35,790,499,(X)0 feet b. m. of merchantable timber in 
the forests owned by Indians with a present stumpage value of $83,812,523. 
The total area of timber lands is reported to be 6,390,046 acres. In the 


18 


Northwest are valuable tracts of pine and in northern California and southern 
Oregon are some of the finest redwood forests in the country which are owned 
by Indians. The potential timber wealth is much larger than the value now 
carried on the books of the Indian Office. On several reservations white 
lessees are cutting timber under contracts approved by the Indian Office and 
many Indians have become expert sawyers, mill men, loggers, and cruisers, 
This branch of the service is handled by the forest section of the Indian 
Office whose head is the chief supervisor of forests, a man who besides being 
a practical forester has the advantages accruing from a special course in 
forestry at college. This service operates sawmills, owned by the Govern¬ 
ment, maintains a fire-protection service, builds roads through forests, runs 
telephone lines, keeps track of all matters relating to timber permits and 
leases and generally performs all the duties of a national forest service. In 
addition the forest service people on reservations endeavor to teach Indians 
the modern practices of forestry. 

INDIAN ALLOTMENTS AND CITIZENSHIP. 

Indians, traditionally and racially, are communal in their state of mind 
concerning land ownership. When the United States first reserved land 
areas for Indians the land was owned by the tribe. Some tribes bad their 
own methods of dividing up the land among individual Indians for their 
individual use and occupancy but the tribe nevertheless owned the land. In 
1887 Congress passed the general allotment act, commonly known as the 
Dawes Act, so named after the late Senator Dawes of Massachusetts, its 
introducer and sponsor. The purpose of this act was to bring about a disin¬ 
tegration of tribal relations; to individualize the Indian problem by dividing 
the Indian tribal holdings among the Indians and thus make it easier to merge 
the Indian people into the body politic of the Nation. The act provided that 
when an Indian had received his allotment he then and there became a citizen 
of the United States .and several thousand Indians thus became citizens. 
Allotted Indians received “ trust patents ” from the Government as evidence 
of land ownership. The trust patent was, and now is, in effect a trust deed, 
naming the Goveniment .as a trustee th.at holds the land in trust for the 
Indian for a trust period of 25 years from date of patent, the land during 
this trust period to be held free from taxes: and it could and can neither be 
sold or mortgaged without the consent of the trustee, the Government. 

In 1906 the Dawes Act was amended by the Burke Act, introduced by Mr. 
Charles H. Burke, then representing a district of South Dakota in Congress 
and who now is the Commissioner of Indian Affairs. The Burke amendment, 
as it is generally known, modified the Dawes Act by a provision which made 
citizenship attainable only at the expiration of the trust period, when the 
Indian received a patent in fee for his land and thus became its unrestricted 
owner. Later Congress further modified the citizenship jn'ovisions of both 
acts by giving the Secretary of the Interior discretionary authority to antici¬ 
pate the expiration of the trust period, give an Indian a patent in fee for his 
land or issue to him a certificate of competency, and thus make him a citizen 
of the United States. 

The latest available figures show that 226, 848 Indians received allotments; 
the aggregated areas of which totaled 87,158,655 acres, leaving 85,501,661 
acres to be allotted to 125,000 Indians now on tribal rolls. That is, 125,000 of 
the present 240,000 Indians remaining under Federal supervision have not 
been allotted. Allotting agents of the bureau are constantly in the field 
dividing trib.al land pro rata among the Indians. The prospect is that in a 


19 


comparatively short time all “ allottahle” land will be allotted. There are 
great areas in some parts of the Indian country which are not susceptible to 
allotment, such as the semiarid rough grazing lands of the Navajo and other 
Indians of the southwest. In such lands from 50 to 100 acres of land are 
required to feed a steer for a year; obviously those areas must be kept as 
an open range. 

Allotments range in size from 10 to 40 acres of irrigable lands, 80 to 100 
acres of agricultural laud and up to 640 acres of grazing lands. Some timber 
allotments potentially are very valuable, and in Oklahoma the oil development 
on Indian allotments have made their owners rich. When an Indian receives 
a patent in fee for his land the land automatically passes out from under the 
control of the Government; it becomes taxable and its owner can do with it 
what he wishes. Generally he sells it at the first opportunity for the greater 
percentage of “ released” Indians quickly part with their land for ready cash. 

Over two-thirds of the Indians of this country, as a whole, are citizens of 
the United States and a considerable number of them are citizens and voters 
of the States in which they live. Of the citizen Indians 83,462 are now, or 
have' been, under Federal supervision and it is reported that 29,738 are voters. 
United States citizenship, per se, of Indians does not necessarily carry with it 
the removal of Federal supervision for the courts have held that “ citizenship” 
and “ wardship” are not necessarily antagonistic relations; that “ citizenship” 
is not incompatible with tribal existence or continued guardianship, and so 
may be conferred without completely emancipating the Indians or placing them 
beyond the reach of Congressional regulations adopted for their protection. 

It has been shown in these memoranda that the Secretary of the Interior 
can declare an Indian to be competent and can, give him a certificate of 
competency or a patent in fee and thus confer United States citizenship upon 
him. Such an Indian, to become a voter, must conform to the requirements 
of his State, the same as a white man must. Congress has enacted legislation 
which makes it possible for Indians to become citizen in other ways. In 
fact, there are more than a dozen doors through which Indians can enter 


into United States citizenship. 

There has been much loose talk about this matter of Indian citizenship. 
Organizations, clubs, mass meetings and the like have been held where much 
oratory was loosed and resolutions were adopted demanding “ citizenship for 
Indians,” and denouncing the Indian Office because “ it strives to keep the 
Indians in slavery, conspires to hold these native Americans in a condition of 
peonage and keeps from them sacred right of citizenship.” Such talk is silly. 
There is no one in authority in the Government who has the least desire to 
place one obstacle in the path of Indians aspiring to citizens, provided that 
if incompetent, dependent, and unprepared Indians are made citizens their 
property and their rights, secured by law and treaties, are kept under the 
supervisory care of the Government. The cold fact is that Indians, as a 
whole, are not much concerned about citizenship. Every time a bill confer¬ 


ring citizenship has been introduced in Congress Indians, themselves, have 
led in opposing it. The records of Congress prove this conclusively. It 
is quite probable an Indian citizenship bill will be passed by Congress in the 
near future, but it will contain a provision which will continue Federal pro¬ 
tection of tribal relations, Indian property, and Indian legal and treaty rights. 

The words “allotted,” “unallotted,” “competent,” “incompetent,” “restricted,” 
and “ unrestricted,” applied to Indians, are in common use in official corre- 
.spondence, documents, etc. An “ allotted ” Indian is one to whom a pro rata 


20 


share of tribal land has been given or alloted, and an “ unalloted ” Indian 
is one to whom such allotment has not been made. Land also is allotted or 
unallotted in its character, and unallotted land generally means tribal or 
surplus land. The word “ competent ” and its opposite “ incompetent ” are 
used in their legal sense. A competent person, in law, is one who is able 
to transact the ordinary affairs of his business without the necessary aid or 
assistance of another mind. A “ restricted ” Indian is one whose property, land, 
or money, or both, held in trust by the Government, is restricted as to its dis¬ 
position; a restricted Indian may be a full citizen, but may also be heir to 
the property of a noncitizen, restricted Indian; he thus comes in that class 
for the time being. One of the popular fallacies regarding Indians has them 
restricted in their comings and goings; has them compelled to go to their 
superintendents for passes to leave the reservation. There is nothing in 
that; Indians come and go as freely as do their white neighbors. 

C) 





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